The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
the infinite regresms to which the application of the law of causality always leads. We said above : " Things, i.e., states or conditions of matter" for change and causality have only to do with states or conditions. It is these states which we understand by form, in the wider sense ; and only the forms change, the matter is permanent. Thus it is only the form which is subject to the law of causality.
But the form constitutes the thing, i.e., it is tie ground of the difference of things ; while matter must be thought as the same in all. Therefore the Schoolmen said, "Forma dat esse rei;" more accurately this proposition would run : Forma dat rei essentiam, materia existeniam.
Therefore the question as to the cause of a thing $ ways concerns merely its form, i.e., its state or quality,\nd not its matter, and indeed only the former so far as we^ave grounds for assuming that it has not always existed, b+, has come into being by means of a change. The union of fom and matter, or of essentia and existentia, gives the co7icre^ewhich is always particular; thus, the thing.
And it is ta forms whose union with matter, i.e., whose appearance 1. matter by means of a change, are subject to the law of ca\ality. By taking the conception too widely in the abstract^ mistake slipped in of extending causality to the thing acutely, that is, to its whole inner nature and existence, t^ aiso to matter, and ultimately it was thought justifiau, to ask for a cause of the world itself. This is the orig.0f the cosmological proof.
This proof begins by inferri, from the existence of the world its non-existence, wh^ preceded its existence, and such an inference is quite uustifiable ; it ends, however, with the most fearful inconsi,ncVj for lt does away altogether with the law of causalityrom which alone it derives all its evidencing power, for stopg at a first caUse, and will not go further ; thus ends* ft were? by committing parricide, as the bees kill the dles after they have served their end. All the talk aty the absolute is referable to a shamefast, and thereto disguised cosmological proof, which, in the face of the " Critique of Pure Eeason," has passed for philosophy in Germany for the last sixty years. What does the absolute mean ? Something that is, and of which (under pain of punishment) we dare not ask further whence and why it is. A precious rarity for professors of philosophy !
In the case, however, of the honestly expressed cosmological proof, through the assumption of a first cause, and therefore of a first beginning in a timr which has absolutely no beginning, this beginning is alwa*s pushed further back by the question : Why not earlirf" ?
And so far back indeed that one never gets down fom it to the present, but is always marvelling that the ppsent itself did not occur already millions of years ag- In general, then, the law of causality applies to all thngs in the world, but not to the world itself, for it is immanent in the world, not transcendent ; with it it co*es into action, and with it it is abolished.
This depends itimately upon the fact that it belongs to the mere frm of our understanding, like the whole of the objerive world, which accordingly is merely phenomenal, nd is conditioned by the understanding. Thus the la of causality has full application, without any exception, t aU things in the world, of course in respect of their form, ' the variation of these forms, and thus to their changes.
It is valid for the actions of men as for the impact of a ,one, yet, as we have said always, merely with regard to <ents, to changes.
But if we abstract from its origin in * understanding and try to look at it as purely objectiv^ will be found in ultimate analysis to depend upon M fa°t that everything that acts does so by virtue its original, and therefore eternal or timeless, power ; *erefore its present effect would necessarily have occur^ infinitely earlier, that is, before all conceivable time, * that it lacked the temporal condition.
This tempora;ondition is the occasion, i.e., the cause, on account of hich alone the effect only takes place now, but now ces place necessarily; the cause assigns it its place in
But in consequence of that unduly wide view in abstract thought of the conception cause, which was considered above, it has been confounded with the conception of force. This is something completely different from the cause, but yet is that which imparts to every cause its causality, i.e., the capability of producing an effect.
I have explained this fully and thoroughly in the second book of the first volume, also in "The Will in Nature," and finally also in the second edition of the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 20, p. 44 (third edition, p. 45).
This confusion is to be found in its most aggravated form in Maine de Biran's book mentioned above, and this is dealt with more fully in the place last referred to ; but apart from this it is also very common ; for example, when people seek for the cause of any original force, such as gravitation.
Kant himself (Uber den Einzig Moglichen Beweisgrund, vol. i. p. 21 1-2 15 of Eosenkranz's edition) calls the forces of nature "efficient causes," and says "gravity is a cause. Yet it is impossible to see to the bottom of his thought so long as force and cause are not distinctly recognised as completely different But the use of abstract conceptions leads very easily to their confusion if the consideration of their origin is set aside.
The knowledge of causes and effects, always perceptive, which rests on the form of the understanding, is neglected in order to stick to the abstraction cause. In this way alone is the conception of causality, with all its simplicity, so very frequently wrongly apprehended. Therefore even in Aristotle (" Metaph.," iv. 2) we find causes divided into four classes which are utterly falsely, and indeed crudely conceived.
Compare with it my classification of causes as set forth for the first time in my essay on sight and colour, chap. 1 , and touched upon briefly in the sixth paragraph of the first volume of the present work, but expounded at full length in my prize essay on the freedom of the will, p. 30-33. Two things in nature remain untouched by that chain of causality which stretches into
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